Besides, any large-scale treaty now has to be approved by referendum in several countries, so the union should face the possibility that it may never get one. That need not be a disaster. Since 1990 Europe has been almost continuously preoccupied by inter-governmental conferences and new treaties to tinker with its institutional architecture. Yet the EU's real failing is not a democratic or institutional deficit—it is what the Centre for European Reform, a London think-tank, has termed a “delivery deficit”. After all, if a club cannot deliver benefits to its members, they may decide to scrap it altogether.

基于1个网页-相关网页